“You think it looks awful,” I said. “It’s okay, you can say it.”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s just a big change. I’m still getting used to it. It makes you look kind of artsy.”
I wondered if that was a compliment. I decided to take it as a compliment.
“Should we get out?” he asked. “You picked a good day for skipping school. It’s pretty warm outside.”
It was one of those freakishly warm winter days that’s sort of like a teaser of the spring weather that will eventually arrive. I didn’t even mind that I hadn’t grabbed a jacket, and only had on a sweatshirt over my T-shirt. There was still plenty of snow on the ground, but there was also a path cleared that led up to the frozen pond, and we walked toward it.
“So tell me,” Zach said, “is this radical transformation all for Mrs. Grimes’s benefit?”
I laughed. “I just wanted a change.”
“Change is switching to mousse instead of gel. This is more like a complete overhaul.”
“You don’t like it,” I said again. “My sister thinks it looks ugly.”
“This would be Gracie? The one who opened the door?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“For a moment or two I thought she was you. Then she opened her mouth.”
“Our voices are that different?” I asked.
“Not the voice, so much, but the way she was speaking
—all bubbly and happy.”
“So, what—you think I can’t be bubbly and happy?”
“Oh, you’re probably fully capable of it, but I’ve never actually seen it.”
I couldn’t tell if he was kidding around or if he was serious. Maybe he was a little bit of both. I hadn’t been exactly easygoing with him since the day we met, so probably he thought I was a difficult person, someone who wasn’t all that fun to be around. But if that was the case, why had he shown up at my house?
We walked over some frozen snow to get to a weathered park bench that faced the pond. I sat down first. Zach sat beside me, but it seemed like he was being careful not to sit too close to me.
“You don’t like your sisters?” he asked.
“I didn’t say that,” I said. “I like Annie. Gracie is … well, she’s nothing like me, like you said. It’s not that we don’t get along—it’s just that we’re so different. We don’t always see eye to eye on things.”
“Still, it must be nice to have siblings. They’re like older versions of you.”
“Have you even been listening to what I was saying?” I asked as an angry sigh passed through my clenched teeth.
“What I mean is, they’ve gone through all sorts of stuff before you, and they can help you out, give you advice, that sort of thing.”
“Both of my sisters have spent their entire lives in Shallow Pond. I hardly think they’ve got any advice worth giving.”
“So no one in Shallow Pond knows anything?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “The thing is, once I get out of here, I don’t plan on coming back.”
“Not even to see your sisters?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But there’s no reason they can’t come visit me.”
“We’re alike, you know,” Zach said.
“You plan on getting out of this town as soon as you can too?”
“I mean we’re both independent. We don’t need anyone else’s help.”
Zach was definitely independent. He lived on his own, but me? Was I independent? I didn’t really feel like it. If I was really independent, I would just pack my bags and leave, pull together enough money for a bus ticket and just dive right into the rest of my life. But I couldn’t just run away, and that was because I wasn’t independent. Not really.
“I’m tired of being all alone,” Zach said. “I’m tired of having to face everything on my own. Why am I telling you this?” He stood up suddenly and jammed his fists in his pockets. He began to kick stubbornly at the frozen snow. He muttered a few times beneath his breath like a crazy person. That, and the violent kicking, made me a little bit scared. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but I couldn’t find the courage to speak.
“Look, I know you don’t like me,” he said.
“I didn’t say that.”
He held up his hand to silence me. “You didn’t have to say it. I can tell. And it makes sense—what would ever possess you to be with a loser like myself?”
“You’re not a loser.”
I wasn’t sure if he heard me or not, because he turned away and looked out over the frozen pond.
“I try to imagine them, my parents, what they would have been like when they were my age,” he said. He didn’t look at me. He stared out across the past as if he could see his unknown parents somewhere out there. “Maybe they were my age when they had me, too young to take care of a kid, and they didn’t know what else to do with me. Maybe I was just something that would have gotten in the way of their life. Instead of going away to college or whatever, they would have had to spend their time taking care of me and working crappy jobs just to pay the bills.”
“So instead they just dumped you on the steps of a convent?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine someone acting so heartless and cruel. What kind of life could their child ever have? That was completely unfair.
“What would you do?” he asked.
“If I were you?” I asked.
“What would you do if you got pregnant? Would you give up on all your dreams and just stay here in Shallow Pond to raise a kid?”
“I wouldn’t get pregnant in the first place,” I said, but before the words had even left my mouth, Zach’s question jogged loose something in my head. I knew someone who had given up on all her dreams and stayed in Shallow Pond to raise a child. Allegedly that child was her younger sister, but I recalled the photo album.
There were no pictures of Mom even when Gracie was a baby … like Mom was already dead at that point. Could it be? Could the girl who I’d always thought was my oldest sister actually be my mother?
I forgot about Zach, the bench I was sitting on, the pond, the entire external world. Annie wasn’t old enough to be my mother. Only how did I know how old Annie really was? She looked older than she said she was. She looked old enough to be my mother. My heart was racing. I thought of the way Annie had always treated me—not the way one would treat a younger sister, but the way one would treat a daughter. It all fit—the reason she’d never left Shallow Pond, never gone away to school.
If Annie was my mother, then that meant Cameron was my father. It gave me a chill. I’d thought Cameron was a jerk before, but now I saw that he was downright vile. How dare he date Gracie? No wonder Annie was so upset. He hadn’t even made an attempt to keep in touch with me all the time he’d been gone. Or had he? Memories spun around my head. I recalled Cameron’s story about getting ice cream with him and Annie. I’d assumed they were in school then, but that couldn’t be possible if they were my parents. Unless maybe I was getting it wrong in my memory. I closed my eyes, tried to picture it. I pictured spending time with Annie and Cameron when I was a kid. They certainly did seem old in my memory, older than just teenagers, in which case it would all make sense. It was all true. I knew it.
“What’s wrong?” Zach asked. He must have seen the look of panic on my face.
“I have to go,” I said.
“We just got here,” he said.
My head was spinning. I paid no attention to him. I began running up the path we’d come down.
“Barbara, wait!” Zach called after me. “Let me give you a ride.” I picked up my pace. I didn’t want to talk to him. I needed to get home, but I didn’t want to go with him. I ran toward the street.
Fourteen
I stood at the front door sweating and panting. I shoved my hands into my pockets, but I realized as soon as I did so that I didn’t have my key. My k
ey was in my jacket, and I hadn’t brought that with me. It was still in the house somewhere. I rapped on the door. I waited. Nothing. I pounded on the door. Gracie couldn’t have gone anywhere—Annie had the car. Unless Cameron had come and picked Gracie up. I became convinced of this when I squinted inside and saw only the empty living room. I slid down to sit on the top step.
My cell phone, like my key, was inside the house somewhere. What now? At least it wasn’t that cold out. My head hurt. I shut my eyes, but saw only confusing images. Annie at various ages in her life … the ages I had always presumed her to be versus the age that she probably was. It was dizzying.
Then I heard something. The car—only it wasn’t coming back from the doctor’s office like I first assumed, but down the driveway. I saw Gracie behind the wheel, and Annie in the passenger seat. My reeling mind didn’t even know how to begin to process this additional confusion. I did have enough sense to stand up and flag down Gracie.
“Hey,” I yelled. “Where are you going?”
Gracie rolled down Annie’s window and shouted to me, “There you are. We’ve been trying to find you. Get in the back.”
“Where are you going?” I repeated.
“I didn’t know where you were,” Gracie said. “I tried your cell phone.” Annie was being remarkably quiet during this whole exchange.
“I left it in my room.”
“Yeah, I realized that. Also, you have like a billion text messages on there. You might want to read them sometime.”
“You were reading them?” My voice came out sounding angrier than I had intended.
“Relax, I just saw the little box blinking. Get in the car please.”
I pulled open the back door. I recalled too late about my chopped and dyed hair, but Annie seemed to barely even notice when I got in. Had they put her on some sort of drugs at the doctor’s office?
“How are you feeling?” Annie asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, remembering I was supposed to be home sick from school, “Better,” I added. “How are you feeling?”
“I keep telling Gracie I’m fine, but she won’t listen.”
“You collapsed in the middle of the living room floor,” Gracie said, her voice cracking as she zipped through the stop sign at the end of our street.
“What? You collapsed?” I asked.
“It’s my own fault,” Annie said. “That’s what you get for not eating breakfast.”
“This has nothing to do with skipping breakfast, and you know it,” Gracie said. She continued to drive too fast as she raced through town toward the highway. I watched Shallow Pond fly by outside the window as I tried to make sense of what was going on.
“I thought you went to the doctor this morning,” I said.
“Yes, and he said I was perfectly healthy,” Annie told me. She sounded normal, but she really didn’t look well. Could it be something as stupid as not eating breakfast? I’d felt pretty lousy when I woke up that morning and it was probably because I hadn’t eaten anything the night before.
“You need to go to a real doctor,” Gracie said. “They have machines and tests they can do and stuff at the hospital.”
“I feel better,” Annie said. “Just turn the car around.”
Gracie didn’t listen to her, and I was glad. Annie had been sick for a while and if she’d collapsed, then maybe there really was something seriously wrong. It could be something stupid—maybe she just needed to take some pills or something. I hoped it was something like that, something simple, treatable. The fact that Gracie had managed to get her into the car meant that Annie realized she needed help.
As we neared the highway entrance, Gracie turned on the right blinker and headed toward the southbound entrance ramp.
“No, we’re going north,” Annie said.
“What? Are you delusional on top of everything else? The hospital is south of us.”
“We’re not going there,” Annie said in that clipped, firm tone that made it sound like she was so angry she could barely open her clenched teeth.
“Jenelle volunteers there,” I said. “Maybe she could make a phone call for us. Make sure we get a nice doctor.”
Gracie pulled onto the ramp, but Annie grabbed hold of the steering wheel, jerking it hard to the right. I cried out as I was tossed around in the back seat. Gracie got control of the car and steered us carefully onto the shoulder of the road, bringing the car to a stop. Both of my sisters were breathing heavily in the front seat. It looked like Gracie’s heavy breathing was due to shock. Annie, on the other hand, looked completely exhausted.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Gracie demanded. “You could have killed us all.”
“Listen to me. We’ll go to the hospital, but we’re going up to University Hospital.”
“What? That’s more than an hour away! What do we need to drive all the way up there for?”
“Dad had a friend who worked there,” Annie said.
“And Babie’s got a friend who works at Shipley, which is only twenty minutes away.”
“Volunteers,” I corrected, somehow hoping to smooth over the tension in the front seat. Jenelle had only just started volunteering; she might not even know anyone at the hospital yet.
“We go to University Hospital and meet with Dr. Feld, or you turn the car around and we go home. Those are your two options.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Gracie said. Annie didn’t re-spond. She just glared at Gracie until Gracie finally sighed, popped the car into reverse, and slowly drove backward down the shoulder of the entrance ramp so that we could get onto the northbound ramp.
“Do you even know this Dr. Feld?” she complained when we were finally on the highway headed toward University Hospital.
“He was a good friend of Dad’s. They were close.”
“Couldn’t have been that close,” Gracie said. “I don’t remember ever meeting him.”
“They used to work together,” Annie said.
The whole time I’d known my father, he was a misanthropic hermit, but Annie always told me that he’d been a smart man. A genius, she’d told me, but this was probably hyperbole. He’d been some sort of medical researcher. That was before I was born, and maybe before Gracie was born if my new theory was correct.
“You don’t even know this guy,” Gracie complained. “I don’t understand what the big deal is.” I felt like telling her to just shut up and drive, but she did have a point. It was an awfully long way to drive just so that we could see some doctor who had once worked with my father twenty years ago or more.
“Do you know if Dr. Feld even works there anymore?” I asked.
“Yeah, good point,” Gracie said. “He probably won’t even be there.”
“He still works there,” Annie said.
She turned around to look at me, reaching our her arm to pat me on the hand like I was a little kid. She had dark circles beneath her eyes and her face looked so thin and pale. I hoped this Dr. Feld, whoever he was, was a genius like my father had supposedly been.
“You cut your hair,” Annie said. She smiled as if it took her all her energy to do so. “It looks cute.”
“Cute?” Gracie said. “I’m going to ask them to examine your head as well when we’re there. She looks like hell.”
Annie didn’t respond. She rested her head on the back of her seat. Within a few seconds I could hear her snoring softly. I caught Gracie’s eye in the rearview mirror and we exchanged concerned looks with each other. For a brief moment I found myself wishing it was Gracie who was the sick one. I quickly chased those thoughts from my mind. Annie would be fine, I told myself. It was probably nothing.
Fifteen
As bad as Annie looked, there were worse-looking people in the crowded emergency room. This was only mildly reassuring. The woman behind the counter offered us a clipboard loaded up with forms to
fill out, but Annie ignored it.
“We’re here to see Dr. Feld,” she said.
“Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked.
“Just tell him that Annie Bunting is here to see him.”
“Have a seat,” the woman told us. She sighed in an extra-loud way, to let us know this request was quite a burden for her.
We sat down in the waiting room chairs. Gracie had picked up the clipboard and was starting to fill things out. I realized this would give me the perfect opportunity to double-check Annie’s birthday, but before Gracie could get more than Annie’s name on the clipboard, Annie took it away and stuck it on an empty chair.
“Don’t worry about it,” Annie said. “We don’t need it.”
The woman came out from behind the desk and stood before us. She looked disgusted. Apparently protocol was very important to her.
“Dr. Feld asked me to show you into an examination room. He’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
The other folks sitting in the waiting room gave us annoyed looks as we followed the cranky woman back to one of the rooms. I felt sort of like royalty, getting to jump the line so easily. Sometimes it helped to know the right people. Maybe it had been a good idea to go out of the way to go to this hospital.
“You know, the two of you don’t have to wait here with me,” Annie said.
“What if you collapse again?” Gracie asked.
“Do I look like I’m going to collapse?” Annie said.
She sat on the paper-covered exam table. She might not have looked like she was about to collapse, but she didn’t exactly look healthy.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t go see someone when you first got sick,” Gracie said. “You’re so stubborn. You’re just like Dad.”
“I’m nothing like him!” Annie’s voice came out sharp and angry. Other than when she’d grabbed the steering wheel, it was the most energy I’d seen her use all day. I tried to remember if our father had also refused to go see someone when he got sick. I couldn’t recall him ever being sick. Well, except for when he died. Was that what Gracie meant? If he’d gone to the hospital, would they have been able to help him? Would he still be around if he’d gotten treatment? I didn’t have a chance to ask because the door opened and Dr. Feld stepped in.
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